Winnipeg -- Re Chinese Dissident Disputes Organ-Harvest Allegations (Aug. 30): Harry Wu, a Chinese human-rights activist and former victim of Chinese oppression, dismissed testimony of a claimed human-rights violation in Sujiatun, China, as a fabrication without ever interviewing the person providing the testimony, and in advance of the bulk of the investigation Mr. Wu eventually completed.
David Kilgour and I wrote a report to determine whether organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners was occurring throughout China and came to the conclusion that it was. Mr. Kilgour, unlike Mr. Wu, did interview the witness and did decide she was credible. In writing our report, we did not rely on her testimony because it had so much detail that could not, given the repression of information of human-rights violations in China, be independently confirmed.
Our focus was all of China and not, like both the witness and Mr. Wu, just Sujiatun. So, in the end, the person who made the claim was not a key witness for our report. The article gives a mistaken impression that she was.